Dodge vs Armor question, midigation and effective health

[Wendelboe]

So I read around and many people seem to believe armor is the way to go to improve your effective health. Most notably this is with choice of cloaks, cloak enchants and rings (with item and enchants offering avoidance being looked on as inferior to similar item level or "budgeted" gear/enchants that have more armor).

Maybe I dont understand the concept or math for effective health properly so perhaps someone can better explain it. Ill use cloak enchants as an example. On one hand you could go with 225 armor which by rough calculating would provide an extra 0.2% damage reduction. On the other hand you could go with 22 agility which gives about 0.4% avoidance as well as about 0.04% damage reduction from the 44 armor the agility would provide (not to mention the 0.4% increased chance to crit which = threat, even if threat is a non issue at this point).

To me 0.4% avoidance is 0.4% midigation statisticaly speaking so would be greater that the 0.2% midigation from the armor (which would really only be a 0.16% midigation improvement over the agility enchant because of the armor from agi). If this is the case, is armor just in higher demand because it is "more reliable" in that you can always count on that 0.2% midigation being there while the 0.4% avoidance is great when it "avoids" the whole attack but just isnt reliable? Thoughts?

[Nighty]

I'm not really into the whole tankt theory crafting but theres one thing that I have to say.

It is called miTigation god dammit !

[Alski]

Effective Health is the measurement of how much breathing room your healers have to keep you alive assuming all other factors fail -- assuming you do not avoid or block attacks or have a mana shield active. Effective Health is important for tanking heavy hitting creatures because of Murphy's Law -- if you can have long strings of not Dodging an attack, it will definitely happen. Raid tanking, ultimately, is about stability.

its basicly saying only armor and stamina are taken into consideration for EH, so of course armor/stam os going to come out better than agi in this case, But the thing with armor enchants is they dont scale with any multipliers so they are just that weak enchants when you compair them to agi which will give you more time to live

dont get EH and TTL mixed up, they are 2 different things

[monalin]

I think you've been reading incorrect information. Not sure where you get you're data from its wrong. I'm not saying you're calculations are wrong, they might be but i don't know. What i'm saying is that the armor you need will be gotten from having raiding epics and a decent shield.

The only class that should enchant for armor would be a druid.

As a pally Stam is you're friend. You get more threat from having more stam as well as more hp. Stam scales better for kings too ( if your talking about effective health ) I'm not saying Armor is worthless, but don't bother stacking it or doing anything with it. Get a good shield and you'll be good.

Pally tanks should follow the following gear path.

1. Get Defense capped at 540
2. Get to 28000 HP (at least)
3. Get 23% dodge 19% parry 20% block
4. Get 200 + hit
5. Get 24 Expertise
6. Get as much HP as you can without loosing any avoidance hit or expertise.

Edit: Think of block as your armor. Its much easier to avoid more damage from block then by enchanting for armor. If geared correctly you can avoid 2k each hit. If the boss hits for 10k you just avoided 20% of the hit by blocking.

[Shamb]

Effective Health is the measurement of how much breathing room your healers have to keep you alive assuming all other factors fail -- assuming you do not avoid or block attacks or have a mana shield active. Effective Health is important for tanking heavy hitting creatures because of Murphy's Law -- if you can have long strings of not Dodging an attack, it will definitely happen. Raid tanking, ultimately, is about stability.

its basicly saying only armor and stamina are taken into consideration for EH, so of course armor/stam os going to come out better than agi in this case, But the thing with armor enchants is they dont scale with any multipliers so they are just that weak enchants when you compair them to agi which will give you more time to live

dont get EH and TTL mixed up, they are 2 different things

Nicely answered

[Alski]

The only class that should enchant for armor would be a druid.

wrong, armor enchants dont scale with our bear form multiplier

[Oweena]

Pally tanks should follow the following gear path.

1. Get Defense capped at 540
2. Get to 28000 HP (at least)
3. Get 23% dodge 19% parry 20% block
4. Get 200 + hit
5. Get 24 Expertise
6. Get as much HP as you can without loosing any avoidance hit or expertise.

I'd rank expertise as higher than hit..

Parry chance reduction ftw

[frankster]

imagine you've only get 23k hp unbuffed and you're trying to tank malygos. healers will have a hard time keeping you up because the damage you take is quite high relative to your healthpool. 1% extra dodge wont really make you stay alive longer as healing you is just too hard, therefore stack stamina or armour to fix your healthpool.

imagine now you've got some upgrades and you've got 29khp unbuffed. you probably dont need to bother with stamina any more apart from the odd encounter such as sarth 3 drakes, so you can go for avoidance (or dmg/threat) as avoidance now is the best way of reducing hte chance you get into dodgy situations.

[monalin]

I'd rank expertise as higher than hit..

Parry chance reduction ftw

If you were a warrior tank i'd say you're right. But theres only two attacks which get parried for me. Hammer of the Righteous and Melee attacks.

Almost all of my attacks can miss.
Hammer of the Righteous
Melee
Shield of Righteousness
Judgments
AS
Exorcism
Holy Wrath
Holy Shield

[DaveTheHunter]

I think you've been reading incorrect information. Not sure where you get you're data from its wrong. I'm not saying you're calculations are wrong, they might be but i don't know. What i'm saying is that the armor you need will be gotten from having raiding epics and a decent shield.

The only class that should enchant for armor would be a druid.

As a pally Stam is you're friend. You get more threat from having more stam as well as more hp. Stam scales better for kings too ( if your talking about effective health ) I'm not saying Armor is worthless, but don't bother stacking it or doing anything with it. Get a good shield and you'll be good.

Pally tanks should follow the following gear path.

1. Get Defense capped at 540
2. Get to 28000 HP (at least)
3. Get 23% dodge 19% parry 20% block
4. Get 200 + hit
5. Get 24 Expertise
6. Get as much HP as you can without loosing any avoidance hit or expertise.

Edit: Think of block as your armor. Its much easier to avoid more damage from block then by enchanting for armor. If geared correctly you can avoid 2k each hit. If the boss hits for 10k you just avoided 20% of the hit by blocking.

Actually, you do not need 28k unbuffed health. This is just not true in any way. I had all WotLK content cleared (server firsts) with ~25k unbuffed as MT and STILL have less than 28k. People put way too much emphasis on the health pool when all you really need is the minimum EH to survive the encounter. Once you reach that point it's all about avoidance/mitigation.

I'd rank expertise as higher than hit..

Parry chance reduction ftw

Expertise is more important as a threat stat than a parry reduction stat, and its importance as a threat stat is minimal. Tankadins never should have been worried about the infamous and mostly mythical "parry gib" and definitely shouldn't be now.

[Fastblack]

Paladins also only need 16 expertise due to the seal of vengeance glyph to make 26 (not 24) expertise

[Alski]

To me 0.4% avoidance is 0.4% midigation statisticaly speaking so would be greater that the 0.2% midigation from the armor (which would really only be a 0.16% midigation improvement over the agility enchant because of the armor from agi). If this is the case, is armor just in higher demand because it is "more reliable" in that you can always count on that 0.2% midigation being there while the 0.4% avoidance is great when it "avoids" the whole attack but just isnt reliable? Thoughts?

thought i should also remark on this, lets assume tank A has 30k armor and tank B has the same gear + the enchant (30225 armor)

Tank A: 66.325% damage reduction
Tank B: 66.491% damage reduction

now there is only a .166% difference in the 2 values but you have gone from takeing 33.675(per100 points of damage) to 33.509 which happens to be about a .49% reduction in damage. Looking at it on paper will give a better value than looking at 22 agi converted to dodge which gets hit with diminishing returns, but at the end of the day its better to outright avoid the attack than it is to mitigate part of it so that's typically why you will always see tanks choosing avoidance over mitigation for enchants/gems etc

[monalin]

imagine you've only get 23k hp unbuffed and you're trying to tank malygos. healers will have a hard time keeping you up because the damage you take is quite high relative to your healthpool. 1% extra dodge wont really make you stay alive longer as healing you is just too hard, therefore stack stamina or armour to fix your healthpool.

Maybe i misunderstood you. Are you saying that armor will fix your health pool against spell damage? The hits that will probably kill you on malygos are spell damage not physical.

Actually, you do not need 28k unbuffed health. This is just not true in any way. I had all WotLK content cleared (server firsts) with ~25k unbuffed as MT and STILL have less than 28k. People put way too much emphasis on the health pool when all you really need is the minimum EH to survive the encounter. Once you reach that point it's all about avoidance/mitigation.

You're right you don't NEED 28k unbuffed. Almost every top guild cleared all the content with tanks who were around 25k unbuffed. At this point in the game its relatively easy to get at least 27k hp unbuffed and with a few pieces of 25 man loot 28k is definitely in range which is why I picked this number. Its not unreasonable to reach for this number as a tank in any kind of guild. Is it required. Absolutely not, will it make fights like Sappharion, Patchwerk, and Malygos easier? Yes... Thats all i'm trying to say.

[Wendelboe]

Tank A: 66.325% damage reduction
Tank B: 66.491% damage reduction

now there is only a .166% difference in the 2 values but you have gone from takeing 33.675(per100 points of damage) to 33.509 which happens to be about a .49% reduction in damage.

This i believe is the argument that those who say armor > than avoidance use.

[Alski]

This i believe is the argument that those who say armor > than avoidance use.

thats because its the only argument they can use, but still its better to outright avoid the attack than it is to mitigate part of it

[rabbimojo]

Armor and avoidance are both exponential gains, in the sense that gaining 1% damage reduction, or 1% avoidance, means more and more, the higher you have.

However, they are qualitatively different.
Suppose you have two tanks, one with 75% reduction through armor, but 0% avoidance, and another with 75% avoidance, but 0 reduction through armor.

The armor tank will take very smooth damage, and be easy to heal. The avoidance tank will probably get gibbed when they don't avoid an attack, which is bound to happen.

That's the crux of the armor > avoidance argument, although I made it a bit extreme.

The other angle, though:
Suppose we take a more reasonable pair of tanks: One with 50% avoidance, 75% armor, and one with 75% avoidance and 50% armor.
Neither should get gibbed by an unlucky hit streak, because they have armor and presumably enough hp to handle it. Overall, both take the same damage.

However, suppose the avoid tank doesn't get hit 10 attacks in a row. The healers are potentially now making use of the 5sr to regenerate, maybe even decursing a bit, throwing out raid heals, etc. Maybe not, I know it's dangerous to take your eyes off the tank for even a second, but it's an option.

Maybe more importantly, the breathing room they have lets them go "Oh shite, I'm standing in fire *shuffle shuffle*" and not die.

Comparatively, the armor-heavy tank takes more continual healing.

One isn't necessarily better than the other, but there -are- differences, and a good tank/raid should keep in mind which is better for a given encounter.

[rabbimojo]

Oh hey, and a fun little math exercise on health pools, and how they can mean a lot more than people give them credit for, sometimes:
Suppose you're taking hateful-style massive hits, regularly. Not necessarily actual Patch hits, just hypotheticals.
Let's say these hits are exactly 20k each, and land every 2 seconds like clockwork.

There's an argument I hear a lot, especially when discussing Patch, that you don't need to stack stamina because you won't live through 2 hits anyways (or 3, I imagine people can soak 2 now. Haven't been paying much attention to what his hits are actually landing for). But in truth, stamina has a very interesting effect on this.

Now, technically to survive this, you need 20001 hp. But, this assumes you have perfect/infinite healing output, and demands 10000 healing per second constantly.

Suppose we take two tanks, one has 25000 health, the other has 30000. Sure, there will be avoidance/armor differences here, but let's ignore those for now, just focusing on the health pool question.
The 25k tank takes a 20k hit, has 5k. His healers now have to scramble to put out 15k healing in 2 seconds to make sure that next hit doesn't kill him. IE, demand is for 7500 healing per second.

The 30k tank takes a 20k hit, has 10k. Her healers have to put out 10k healing in 2 seconds, IE, 5000 healing per second. In these terms, the 25k tank requires -50% more healing throughput- than the 30k tank.

Let's add another 5k to the 30k, make her a 35k tank.
35k takes a 20k hit, needs just 5k healing over those 2 seconds, IE, 2500 healing per second. Now, the 25k tank requires -200% more healing throughput- to keep up. Isn't that pretty astounding?

These numbers are true even with higher health pools, IE 20k hits and a 45 vs. 50k, vs 55k, etc. The actual required heals-per-sec are lower though. Still, the ratio is amazing.

At least, that's how I like to think about it. Health pools do occasionally mean more than 'wasted budget'. They provide breathing and reaction room for your healers, and in some sense raise the value of avoidance (which again, is I believe easier to stack for many tanks, %-for-%), since in the limit, avoidance and damage reduction are identical.

Just a neat thought.

[Napier]

Let's say these hits are exactly 20k each, and land every 2 seconds like clockwork.

...

Now, technically to survive this, you need 20001 hp. But, this assumes you have perfect/infinite healing output, and demands 10000 healing per second constantly.

The 25k tank takes a 20k hit, has 5k. His healers now have to scramble to put out 15k healing in 2 seconds to make sure that next hit doesn't kill him. IE, demand is for 7500 healing per second.

The 30k tank takes a 20k hit, has 10k. Her healers have to put out 10k healing in 2 seconds, IE, 5000 healing per second. In these terms, the 25k tank requires -50% more healing throughput- than the 30k tank.

Sorry, but this is terrible math. All you're doing is figuring how much healing they need for the first round. After the first couple hits, those healers are going to HAVE to average 10000 healing per second, no matter how much HP the tank started with.

Having a bigger hp pool means they have more room for mistakes, but it makes basically no difference on the total amount of hp per second they're going to need to heal over the course of the fight.

[monalin]

Stole the words right out of my mouth. I had a very long post about this but i'm at work and i got caught up doing some stuff and when i got back my session timed out and i lost all my message... i'm not typing it again haha.

But you're right. The math is terrible. HP has no affect on the amount healed aside from the inital buffer. For your case its 5k hp. Our last Patchwerk attempt our highest HP tank took a little over 1 mil in damage for the fight, which comes out to .5% of a difference in healing needed. Very negligible...

[beho]

I'm a heal this time around, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but the tank with the most "oh shit" room is the best tank, and the easiest tank I've ever had to heal was 26k unbuffed, and the worst was a 40k druid.

The 26k tank had a ton of avoidance and hardly took any damage, any spikes were very easy to handle, and I had no trouble at all getting my healing seals and tank shields up during the fight making it even easier to heal. The 40k druid tank was a nightmare, with almost minimal gear based dodge (stacked all stam), this guy was a nightmare to heal, he'd take nearly every single hit and chew through my mana pool.

This was the point I stopped looking at stam as the main stat for any tank, and started looking at the whole picture. I really like a tank to be well balanced, so that threat, armor, stam and avoidance are all in decent balance.

Think of it this way, you stacked avoidance/armor/stam but neglected your threat (blue weapon, no hit on gear, etc). Yes you are very easy to heal, but the TG Fury warrior that keeps pulling off you is not, I'm actually healing *more* than if you would have balanced your gear properly, I miss a heal at a bad time.... boom party wipe, healer gets blamed, healer blames TG Fury for pulling aggro and soaking heals, TG Fury blames tank for not being geared... tank throws hands up and says "Look at my crazy tanking stats, I'm geared, you suck... this group is fail. Peace.".

The only thing worse than fail is complex cascade fail... The moral of the story is, tanks need balance and to stop thinking so much about the theorycrafting max ttl and eh